One day, I
was conducting a lesson to a group of fourth grade students at Elementary School. These kids were about 9 years old. The lesson, wasn’t really a lesson, if truth be
told. We ended up playing several games,
which is a good introduction for teaching English to children I guess, as
learning any new language can be daunting and a bit frustrating at times.
I was not
expecting, however to be given a few life lessons myself in the hour I spent
with this spritely class.
So our first
game of the lesson was a very basic variant of the ‘Captain’s Coming’ game. Colours in English were used in place of the
usual commands. ‘Red’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Blue’
and ‘Green’ were the sides of the classroom, ‘hitting the deck’ was ‘Purple’,
jumping up and down was ‘Pink’ and riding piggyback was ‘Orange’. I had been informed by the Class Teacher at
the start of the lesson that one student was absent from school. The class roll totalled 20 boisterous
students, so I made a mental note that as there were only 19 students for the
game, whenever I called ‘Orange’, I would pair up with the student left with no
partner.
All 20
students with the exception of one, I would describe as being typically cute
and of slight frame and build as one would expect in a Japanese child. In general, Japanese adults are small.
Japanese children however, are microscopically small. The one child who isn’t, for the purposes of
anonymity, we’ll refer to as ‘Jack’.
Jack is cute of course, but of a more generously rotund frame than his
peers. He is absolutely adorable, and
reminds me of a baby panda, albeit one who is at least 3 years old. He is both confident and popular, and a
cheeky grin regularly occupies his chubby, wubby face! If there was a picture of him, framed in a
meme, it would have the words ‘Oh, bless!’ written above it.
The game
begins with a few rounds, so that the students can familiarise themselves with
the colours. In no time, children are
seen sprinting from one end of the classroom to the next. Shrieks of laughter can be heard after each
instruction is called out. Suddenly, I call
out ‘Orange!’ as kids are seen frantically scrambling to grab a partner,
quickly deciding who will get hitched onto whose back. I scan the room for the ‘partnerless’ child,
when I spot Jack standing on his own, shuffling his feet, contemplatively
looking at his friends around him. Oh,
bless! I call out his name and when he
turns to look at me, I gesture for him to come over. He stands in front of me, and I’m a little
surprised that given his popularity, that he was the one left to fly solo. Facing my back to him, I crouch down and tap
my back with my hand, signalling him to jump on. He hesitates and I turn around to offer him a
reassuring smile. He puts his hands on
my shoulders and hops on, and then for the life of me…I can’t stand up! I couldn’t even raise myself enough so that I
could extend my legs to use as leverage.
I had no idea how much this kid weighed.
All I knew was that whatever it was, I couldn’t lift it! By this time, I was sweating profusely, but
despite my efforts, I remained stationary, like a frickin’ statue. For the love of all things sacred (like my
self-respect) someone press play! I was
painfully embarrassed at this point, trying to understand how after years of
intermittent exercise and training, I was still sadly lacking in basic human
strength!
If this boy
gets treated for depression later in life, the blame will be laid at my feet. Wouldn’t it have been better to quickly call
out the next set of instructions before anyone noticed that he had no partner?
Why did you have to try and be a hero? During this one sided conversation with
myself, hapless but heavy Jack hopped off without much difficulty. He moved to stand beside my crouched
figure. I slowly turned my head, fully expecting
to see the tear-stained, broken face of a Panda. Instead, Jack was grinning and scratching the
side of his face. He then began
examining his fingernails for ‘epithilials’ and the grin was promptly replaced
with a concentrated look. Wow. Just like that, he’d clearly moved on to more
interesting things, like the state of his pudgy hands. A failure of epic proportions, I thought on
my part, and this kid could give a shit! Looking around I noticed some of the class
staring back at me, patiently waiting for the next set of instructions, while
other children were still tenuously hanging onto the backs of their
partners. All were totally oblivious to
my irrational, internal garble of a minute and a half ago. I
quickly stood up and called out ‘Purple!’. The game resumed and ‘Orange’ was permanently
shelved. Jack suffered no flashbacks of
the offending incident and counselling was deemed unnecessary as well as highly
inappropriate. I did not lose my job,
although was gently advised to ‘chill out’.
So the life
lessons learnt and committed to memory on that day were as follows. Number one, kids in general, the world over,
are a lot more resilient than we adults give them credit for. Number two, try and get over things as
quickly as kids do. Life need not be so
stressful. And last but not least,
Number three, as an adult, try not to ‘over compensate’ when assisting a child. Your efforts may prove agonisingly
disappointing to you and comically irrelevant to them. Please do not try this at home. You will only look like a fool.
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